


Children of the Lost

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Death, Dark, F/M, Feanor gets two closer to his goal of 49 grandchildren, First Age, Gen, Post-Doriath, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Maglor didn't plan any of this. It just sort of . . . happened.





	Children of the Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> For more specific warnings, please check the notes at the end.

He had known it was a bad idea from the beginning. They all had, even if his brothers were all kind enough not to say so now.

There was no hope left in their war. Not even any confidence in the rightness of their cause. Just their Oath and desperation and the endless sea of blood.

There was no justification at all for his marriage. It broke all their customs and laws regarding marriage and war, and though he was hardly the first to break it, and it was hardly the worst taboo he had broken, it was taboo for a reason, and the reasons only applied all the more to him.

Those reasons seemed a lot clearer to him now, waiting hopelessly in the gathering dark outside the healers’ tent, then they had back then, when she’d looked at him like he was a hero, the first person to do so since - since he didn’t know when.

…

_They were supposed to have turned back to Amon Ereb a day ago, but Maglor had pushed the patrol onward after he’d spotted signs of orcs in the area. It would be unsafe to allow them to roam freely, which was the official reason they were doing it; the unofficial reason was that after Doriath, Maglor suspected that they all longed for a straightforward fight against their true foe._

_No amount of orcish blood could wash away the rest of it, but maybe it could mask it for awhile._

_The orcs themselves came into view as they rode over a low hill._

_Orcs, and the Men they were fighting._

_Men were not straightforward. Ulfang’s treachery and the blood of his sons, weighed against the line of Bór, testified to that._

_But this band had women and children - more women and children than men at this point - and whatever the allegiances of the Men, killing orcs would never be wrong._

_They charged._

_Taken by surprise by the elvish calvary, pitiful remnant of what he’d had at the Gap though it was, the orcs were dispatched quickly, and the Men did not seem at all inclined to attack._

_When Maglor asked who was in charge, intending to offer their skills in healing the injured, a tall woman with unevenly cut black hair stepped forward, and he was reminded of what Caranthir had told him once of Haleth. He expected a proud, polite, rebuff._

_But Hirwen’s eyes shone with wonder as she thanked him for his help._

…

He hadn’t been prepared, that was the problem. He hadn’t been trying to have a child. With an elvish woman that would have been enough.

But with a mortal woman it wasn’t. She had become pregnant, and she wasn’t built to sustain a child’s fëa, not the way an elvish woman was. It had cost her and cost her greatly, and Maglor had worn himself thin from desperate singing as he tried to bolster her spirit with his own.

There’d been Peredhel before, he kept trying to assure himself. Half-elven children were possible.

Or at least they were when there was also the blood of a Maia involved and when the elf half of the equation wasn’t the male.

… 

_They were not a soft people. They couldn’t afford to be. But nor could they afford to be proud, as their plentiful scars and too prominent bones attested._

_His name meant as little to her as hers did to him. They were a people bent on surviving, with no elders left to teach them their history. There had been a village, once; it had burned in Hirwen’s youth. That was all of her people’s history that she knew, and she had very little time to worry about finding out more._

_She knew of the Doom because he told her: bluntly, grimly, trying to quash the hopeful light in her eyes before he got too used to it. More importantly, though, she had to know, because she had asked if her people might travel with his, and she had a right to know what she was asking._

_“So this Doom says you will die and die ill,” she summarized._

_“Yes.” And they had. Oh, how so many had._

_Hirwen considered this. “Tell me then, elf prince. How is that different from what will happen to me and my people if we do not follow you?”_

_He looked around at her people. Still fierce. Still determined._

_But so close to starving. So close to having fought their last stand today._

_“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It probably isn’t. If you really want to follow us, we can always use the extra swords.”_

…

A terrible moan came from behind the closed flap of the tent. Maedhros’s hand tightened its grip on Maglor’s shoulder. It was the first time Maglor had been jolted enough out of himself to notice his brothers for hours.

“It’ll be alright,” Maedhros said tightly, and Maedhros remembered their mother giving birth enough times that he ought to know. 

But Miriel had not been able to bear their father safely, and Curufin’s wife had nearly been lost after Celebrimbor. Only Nerdanel had been the exception in what seemed to be their line’s rule.

For the first time in a long time, Maglor prayed.

…

_She didn’t consider herself doomed for following him, and she didn’t consider him doomed either, or at least no more doomed than everyone else in Beleriand. It was refreshing to be near her, to steal little moments of hope._

_He became addicted to those small tastes of happiness, and it seemed he was still a romantic at heart._

_Bit by bit, he fell in love._

_It would end ill. He knew there was no other way it could go._

_But it happened anyway._

…

The tent flap was flung back and a healer appeared in front of them. Maglor was far too lost in fear to worry about which one it was.

“Prince Maglor,” the healer said frantically, “Prince Maglor, come at once. We need your voice. It’s the only way she might pull through.”

After nine long months of struggling to sustain too many lives, Maglor had little left to give, but he pushed quickly to his feet regardless and ignored the way he wobbled.

Maedhros didn’t let go of him. “I’ll lend you strength,” he promised. “We all will.”

They’d been doing that for months too. 

Ever since they’d learned it was twins.

… 

_“Twins,” Hirwen said, looking from the grave healer to her own growing belly. “It’ll be a difficult birth, then. More difficult, I mean.”_

_Maglor’s hand tightened around hers._

_“My largest concern will be the effort needed to sustain and nourish their fëar,” the healer said. “That task is difficult enough for twins when both partners are elves.”_

_“Dior and Nimloth managed it,” Maglor said tightly, though Elured and Elurin’s fate was not quite what he wanted to imagine now._

_“And Dior’s grandmother was one of the Maia,” the healer pointed out. “I have to believe that helped.” Her tone softened. “Your line is strong, my prince. I do not say there is no hope. I only want you to be prepared for the danger.”_

_“Any child may be lost,” Hirwen said, eyes growing dark with some memory. “At any time. There is always danger.”_

_“There is also danger to you,” the healer pointed out. “And the strength of Finwe’s line will only further endanger you in that regard.”_

_Hirwen looked to Maglor, one eyebrow raised._

_He had never told her this story before. It all seemed so distant now._

_“Some called my father the greatest of the Noldor,” he told her. “He was certainly one of the most powerful.” He looked down. Down to where her hands cradled her belly much as he imagined his grandmother must have once. “He was too strong for my grandmother. Bearing him killed her.”_

_“Bearing an ordinary child killed Beril,” Hirwin said. “And the grief of losing a child killed my cousin, and there’s a great many other tales I could tell besides. You elves are very concerned with reminding me that I could die. Of course I might die. If I don’t die doing this, it’ll be doing something else.” She shrugged. “There are worse ways to go.”_

…

He poured every ounce of strength he had or could borrow into his song. At last, at long last, the twins were pushed into the world.

But even for the strain she’d been under, Hirwen’s face was far too pale. 

“Don’t stop,” one of the healer’s warned as she started up her own song.

Hirwen’s hand had been wrapped around since she entered. Her grip tightened now. “I’m fine,” she whispered, though it was all too clearly a lie. Her voice was barely a breath. “The babies, where are my babies?”

Maglor looked up, desperate to see them. A healer was holding them, singing to them with frantic speed, but Maedhros was standing behind the woman and could see clearly.

His eyes were filled with every last drop of their ancient grief when he shook his head.

For just a moment, Maglor’s song faltered. 

And in that moment, Hirwen slipped away.

…

_“What do you want to name them?” he asked her._

_She considered this._

_“Is there a name that means ‘not doomed’ in the language of your people?”_

…

Hirwen was buried in the manner of her own people. His children were buried by no one but himself. His remaining brothers hung back as he performed the burials because he had asked them to, but Maedhros refused to hang back long.

“Did you name them?” his brother asked quietly.

“Alambar,” Maglor said. Not-doomed. The name’s irony was bitter on his tongue. “Alambar and Estel.” He stared blankly at the fresh turned earth. “Where do you think they are now? With her? Or waiting somewhere in the Halls?”

“I don’t know,” Maedhros said quietly. “I’m sure wherever they are, they’ll be looked after.”

Maglor hoped they were with Hirwen. It would be - better.

He’d never see them again wherever they went unless they finally fulfilled this mad Oath. It was the Darkness for him, and the small lights that he had tried so hard to save had no place there.

“Do you think,” he asked, still staring at the grave, “do you think if I had helped you look for Elured and Elurin that Mandos might have let them live?”

Maedhros’s hand dug painfully deep into his shoulder. Maglor didn’t much care.

“This wasn’t your fault,” Maedhros said firmly. Desperately, almost, though Maglor wasn’t sure why. “You can’t think like that.”

“Why not?” Maglor’s mouth twisted bitterly. “You blame yourself for everything. Why not me? And it has a sort of twisted justice to it, don’t you think? Symmetry.”

“This isn’t justice,” Maedhros said. “Just - ‘Laure, please. Please just look at me.”

Surprised by the old nickname, Maglor did. It was only when he looked into Maedhros’s burning eyes that he understood.

“I won’t fade,” he said. Dying of grief was entirely out of the question. His bitter smile grew more twisted. “Can’t you feel it in your own heart? The Oath won’t let us.” Burning, branding, entirely too present, entirely too consuming.

It was the only heat left in a barren world.

He looked back up the hill. “Why are the Ambarussa hanging back?”

“They weren’t sure you’d want to see them,” Maedhros said warily.

“Of course I want to see them,” Maglor said. “I need to take the opportunity while I can. The Valar seem to have it out for twins.”

…

_“I know you’re worried about all this,” she said, waving a hand over her growing belly. “But - “ Her hesitation was so uncharacteristic that Maglor looked up with a little bit of alarm. “Are you happy too? At least a little? Would you want children, if things were different?”_

_He could feel them. Two tiny lives, balancing on a knife’s edge of survival. Small, precious, and already fiercely loved._

_“I want them,” he assured her. “I just wish there was some way I could make the world different for them.”_

… 

He agreed to attack Sirion a few years later. Argued for it, even.

It was the only way to get the Silmaril. That had become clear. 

And he had to get the Silmaril if he was to have a single prayer of seeing his children again.

They failed, of course, and two more brothers were lost in the sea of blood.

He found two children in the rubble. Peredhel. Twins. Approximately the age his sons would have been, he thought.

Maedhros’s eyes went instantly wary when he saw Maglor carrying them out of the burning town. “Maglor.” That was all, but it managed to convey a whole world of warning and doubt. You do know they’re not your’s, don’t you?

“Their names are Elrond and Elros,” Maglor said by way of proof of his sanity. 

They were not Alambar and Estel, he knew that, no matter what tricks his mind tried to play. They could not replace his dead sons.

But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be his, and if there was one thing his father had left him besides this impossible Oath, it was the firm knowledge that when it came to children, there was always room for more.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: High risk pregnancy, death in childbirth, death of children petty much immediately after birth, character with a growing death wish, and potentially unhealthy attitudes towards children that have been kidnapped/adopted.


End file.
